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Updated: June 19, 2025
To envy her, who was a prisoner, a chattel to be exchanged for war's immunity, who was a princess in name but a cipher in fact! All was wrong with the world. She had stolen out of the ball-room; the craving to be alone had been too strong. Little she cared whether they missed her or not. She left the window and sat on one of the divans, idly opening and shutting her fan.
They sit chatting with little bundles of sweets and narghilehs before them. An average Englishwoman would look like an houri amongst them; and their customs were beastly, to use the mildest term. The Hammam was entered by a large hall, lit by a skylight, with a huge marble tank in the centre and four little fountains, and all around raised divans covered with cushions.
And in hot afternoons, they showed a strong disposition to lie on the cool divans in the hotel and smoke and talk about pleasant experiences of a month or so gone by for even thus early do episodes of travel which were sometimes annoying, sometimes exasperating and full as often of no consequence at all when they transpired, begin to rise above the dead level of monotonous reminiscences and become shapely landmarks in one's memory.
Slavs with matted hair, American girls in Futurist frocks, Italians like figures out of pre- Raphaelite frescoes, men with monkey faces and monkey manners, men with the faces of mediaeval saints a little debauched by devilish temptations, filled the long bare room, spoke in strange tongues to each other, and made love passionately in the universal language and in dark corners provided with ragged divans.
"Leading the way from the drawing-rooms, or divans, he takes us through bedrooms and dressing-rooms furnished in Spartan simplicity, with the little iron bedsteads covered with bear-skins, and supplied with writing- tables and lamps, beside which repose the Bible, the Shakspeare, the Euclid, and the Breviary, which go with Captain and Mrs. Burton on all their wanderings.
Its door was of teak, inlaid with glittering gold, and by it one passed into a saloon, amiddleward which was a basin of water, with an artificial fountain rising from its midst. It was furnished with carpets and cushions and divans of brocade and tables and other gear such as amazed the wit and defied description.
"I really think Anne Stewart will prefer a bed, Polly, even if it is small," gasped Mrs. Brewster hastily. "Then we'll change later. It won't take a minute to move the sofa in and it will look so citified to the girls who most likely have divans or sofas in their bedrooms at home." "I think they will like the difference not having their country bedroom look like the city one.
She would neither see nor hear any thing of this outside world! The palace is her world, in which she is happy, in which she revels! Ah, that charming, silent little boudoir, with is soft Turkish carpet, with its elastic divans and heavily curtained windows and doors that little boudoir is now her paradise, the temple of her happiness! In it she lingers, and in it is she blessed.
The rooms were spacious, and had big fireplaces, and ample piazzas all round, so that the sun could be courted or the wind be avoided at all hours of the day. It was, in short, not a house for retirement and privacy, but for entertainment. It was furnished luxuriously but gayly, and with its rugs and portieres and divans it reminded Mavick of an Oriental marquee.
But more fairy-like were the nights, when thousands of lamps burned in the halls, a forest of candelabra shone like a conflagration kept within bounds; when the courtiers seemed to sink into the carpets and divans and silken and down coverlets; when the sweet-smelling incense rose from the golden censers and intoxicated the brain; when a hundred servants made ready the banquet of indescribable luxury, and carried it in silver dishes, alabaster bowls, and crystal goblets; when youths and maidens, with arms entwined, crowned each other with wreaths of roses; when the fanfares sounded, and the cymbals clashed, and song gushed from maidens' throats; and when at length Pharaoh entered in flowing purple robes adorned with a thousand sparkling diamond stars on his head an indented coronet, shining like carbuncle the god! the sun-god!
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